Calf fries and sauerkraut soup

 

Before I ask how you weigh in on either of these dishes, let me give you a bit of history: About 1912, a young immigrant arrived in New York from Macedonia (a country now gone that was in the Balkans). By the 1920s, Theo Yordanoff had opened a “hole in the wall” restaurant on Exchange Avenue in Fort Worth, close to the packing houses. When a customer asked for calf fries, which were not on the menu, Yordanoff did some investigating and found that the packing houses would give him, at no cost, all the calf testicles he wanted. He battered them like chicken-fried steak, served them with cream gravy, and his restaurant immediately became part of Fort Worth history.

Confession: I have never eaten calf fries. I have eaten turkey fries and enjoyed them—obviously much smaller. But neither one are what I remember about the Saddle and Sirloin. I went there a few times in the Seventies and Eighties, before it closed, and had the sauerkraut soup, called kapusta. Loved it. Today, Riscky’s Steakhouse has replaced the Saddle and Sirloin, but they still serve calf fries and kapusta.

My history with sauerkraut: I never tasted it until I was grown and away from home. My mother was of German ancestry and apparently had to eat sauerkraut as a child. She despised it but loved German sausages. In my twenties, my brother was married to a woman who caramelized kraut in a skillet, slowly and patiently cooking it with butter and sugar. It was delicious. Since then, I’ve learned to love kraut on hot dogs, sauteed kraut with onions and wine, Reuben sandwiches, kraut almost any way you can fix it.

My friend Mary V. comes for dinner every two or three weeks, and bless her, she eats whatever my experimental dish of the day is. So one day I asked if she liked kraut, and she replied that she loved it. I fixed something with kraut (now I can’t remember what) and had a lot left over. So I decided that next time she came for supper, I’d fix sauerkraut soup. I studied online recipes for kapusta but didn’t find any that sounded just right. Most didn’t have the tomatoes that I remembered. So I printed off a basic recipe and decided to take off on my own. I’m not a chef who writes recipes, but I do often adapt. In this case, I adapted both quantity (I aimed for two servings, ended up with three or four) and taste. Here’s what I did:

Sauerkraut soup

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp, vegetable oil

1 small onion, diced

½ lb. ground beef

8 oz. sauerkraut, drained and rinsed

½ cup white wine

1 cup beef broth

1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

Salt and pepper to taste

½ tsp. sugar

Sour cream for garnish

Brown onion in oil until soft and translucent. Add meat, breaking up into crumbles. Brown and drain if needed. Add remaining ingredients except sour cream. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to an hour.

Serve hot in soup plates with a dollop of sour cream. Rye bread is a nice accompaniment.

Jo étvágyat